


if you've got visions of the past (let them follow you down)

by ddeerlings



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Light Angst, baby's first fic, i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 13:35:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10466229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ddeerlings/pseuds/ddeerlings
Summary: Taako had felt for a long time like something was missing.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic really came from me bouncing around a few ideas in a discord chat, and it all just devolved from there.

He remembered Lup.

It felt like the realization should have hit him like a freight train. It did, but only in the way it made his head pound and his eyes squeeze shut from the searing pain. He initially felt only the clinical, emotionless reactions of a body in distress, not the mental strain of knowing something he couldn’t quite comprehend.

He had a sister. Taako had a sister and she was gone and there was nothing he could do about it now. 

Somehow the information didn’t quite surprise him.

-

Taako had known for a while that there was something irreplaceable missing in his life. Something that made him _him_ , something he made up for with the theatrics and biting humour he infused into every conversation he possibly could. He had felt for a long time like he was only a part of a whole, and it was almost suffocating. It weighed heavy on his mind, still there even when he had more pressing things to worry about.

He was so relieved when he learned about the voidfish.

Everything would be fixed if he could fill in those gaps in his memory, the ones he hadn’t even known were there. Taako almost cried in relief when those memories rushed back to him. It felt odd to him that that information would have left such a _personal_ hole in his life, but he shook that thought off as quickly as he could. It was harrowing suddenly learning about all the death and destruction he had once been forced to forget, but he selfishly took solace in the fact that he would finally feel complete again.

-

It crept back in slowly, the crushing emptiness that leaked into every aspect of his life. For a while Taako could ride on the high of the new information he had, the chance for adventure and risk and a way to make himself useful, but apparently it couldn’t last forever.

-

It started up again simply enough, with a seemingly innocuous question he fielded from Magnus on a slow day between adventures.

They were both in the kitchen, Taako bustling about cooking up a batch of his favourite muffins, a batch he had _very_ explicitly stated wouldn’t be shared with either of his companions. Despite the lost promise of food, Magnus was still content to share the kitchen space with him, sitting at the table reading whatever book he had dug up in the library just for something to do. They occupied themselves with their individual tasks in comfortable silence for a while, but Magnus opened his mouth to speak just as Taako slid the muffin tin into the oven.

“Where did you even learn to cook like that?” He asked, his careful tone of voice infuriating to Taako. Magnus was fully aware of the weight that question carried, something that Taako regretted more and more each day.

Taako barreled through the sick feeling rising in his stomach, letting the answer roll off his tongue with practiced ease. “Had an aunt who loved to pass down all her tricks,” he replied flippantly, closing the oven door with a flourish. “Couldn’t shake her off, so I decided I might as well pick up a few things, guess it stuck.” He shrugged, winding up the timer and setting it carefully back down on the counter.

Magnus nodded and returned to his book, seemingly pleased with the answer, but Taako was less than convinced. Something felt off about the easy reply he’d given, even though he knew with all certainty it was the truth. Taako was no stranger to lying, but he wouldn’t have bothered making up a lie to tell Magnus about this.

The confidence he had in his answer didn’t stem the wave of unidentifiable emotion rolling over him as he stood there at the kitchen counter, clutching the edge with an overwhelming sense of dread.

 _Something_ was missing, an emptiness that felt like a punch to the gut every time his mind ran up against it.

For now, his brain pushed and prodded at the memory he associated most with his early cooking days, one of him standing next to his aunt in their tiny kitchen, her talking and gesturing wildly as he listened intently. His chin was resting on the countertop as he strained upward, too short to comfortably reach the surface even from his perch on an old wooden stool. It was such a mundane memory, but it was one he cherished more than almost anything. The thought bubbling up in his mind that it might not be the full truth, that there were parts of it he couldn’t quite reach, made his stomach drop, threatening to bowl him over.

In that moment, he knew that the constant sense of _wrongness_ he had carried with him for entirely too long was back now in full force, and he felt sick just thinking about it.

-

It didn’t stop there, of course, and Taako grew more and more frustrated every time it happened. A headache threatened to form every time he strained to fill in the gaps, so eventually he stopped trying completely. It felt as though that should’ve fixed it, but the unrelenting thought of _this is so wrong what am i missing what could it possibly be_ seeped through the cracks in his mind, threatening to completely break his composure at any moment.

Taako had never been an outwardly emotional person ( _at least as far as he could remember,_ he thought bitterly), so he could very easily tamp down any thought of expressing this distress, ignoring how sick and isolated it made him feel.

No matter how easily it was compartmentalized, how effortlessly he could file it away and push it back, he could never quite get the idea out of his mind. What in the world could _possibly_ make Taako feel like this? What could make him feel like some essential part of him had been edited out completely, cut away, leaving a gaping hole in its wake?

-

Refuge just felt like the final nail in the coffin. Seeing his own memories played out in front of him would have been painful enough if it had just been Glamour Springs, but seeing his childhood skip by in front of his eyes was nearly as distressing (only nearly, nothing could quite match up to _forty people, they’re eating out of the palm of your hand God Taako just stop them **please**_ ).

Taako knew now, with absolute certainty, that something was horribly wrong. The huge gap right in the middle of his memory he had somehow never noticed was the most blatantly obvious, but what bothered him even more was almost too subtle to pick up on.

Something was just plain _off_. Once again, he couldn’t exactly place it, but every piece of his childhood had a strange quality, like two transparencies laid over each other that didn’t quite match up. It made Taako’s skin crawl, seeing everything pass by in a sickening rush of _wrong wrong wrong._

-

Finally, standing there in front of The Director ( _Lucretia, oh gods Lucretia what did you do_ ), Taako felt like everything had fallen into place. He wasn’t _happy_ about anything he’d heard, but he wasn’t exactly shocked either. 

In fact, he felt almost stupid for not being able to figure it out on his own. He had ( _had_ had, in the past tense, oh _god_ ) a sister. Taako could feel the grief threaten to overtake him even as Lucretia finished her monologue, even as Davenport (Captain Davenport, _Jesus Christ_ ) scattered coins and tokens across the floor, even as Carey and Killian flung the door open, the Hunger in their wake. He felt the grief, the sadness and the loneliness and the sickening panic. He felt all of this more intensely than he’d possibly ever felt anything, but any trace of shock was completely absent, replaced with an entirely new sense of distant _emptiness._

He remembered Lup now, and she was already gone.

**Author's Note:**

> hey yall! i actually originially wanted to include Lup herself more in this fic, but the idea i had really ended up fitting better with a sort of character study-ish fic, so here it is. this is my very first fic, but if it anyone reads it i'll definitely write some more about Lup herself, i think she has such great potential as a character.
> 
> title from Ghost Town by First Aid Kit
> 
> im @arcaninnes on tumblr, come find me if you want to talk about taz shit PLEASE! thanks yall!


End file.
